When giffgaff pivoted from their grassroots ‘run by you’ positioning to the purpose-driven ‘up to good’, they needed a visual system that could match their ambition, one that could cut through the noise and scale across every touchpoint.
Client
giffgaff
Sector
Telecommunications
Date
2023
Role
Design & Art Direction
Branding & identity
giffgaff's visual identity had become a victim of its own success, an unruly ecosystem of colors, textures, and styles that diluted their message. The brief was deceptively simple: distill years of accumulated visual language into a repeatable, scalable system that could carry dozens of campaign messages without losing impact.
The real challenge? Making bold work consistently bold - across all touchpoints.
Partnering with creative agency Neverland, I art directed a campaign system built on two core principles: typographic confidence and visual restraint.
I stripped back the brand's maximalist tendencies, championing oversized typography as the hero and introducing clean cutout photography, a deliberate departure from their signature black-and-white collage aesthetic. Every element was designed to scale seamlessly from 48-sheet posters to 300x250 web banners without compromise.
The campaign delivered immediate visual impact while establishing a flexible design system that could evolve with the brand. Clean, bold, and unmistakably giffgaff.
The visual style was so powerful that the internal team decided to apply these campaign visuals through all touchpoints of their brand - eventually restructuring their brand visual identity.
This project reinforced what I believe about effective design leadership: clarity beats complexity. By having the confidence to simplify - and the discipline to maintain that simplicity across every application - we created something that actually worked harder for the business.
It also marked a pivotal moment in my career: transitioning from delivering design as a frelance creative, to leading a design team that provides strategic growth.